MILKING THE JUICE
by Malik Isasis



According to the US Census Bureau, television penetrates at least 98.2% of American homes. The late media critic and media studies founder, Neil Postman stated in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death that “The clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation (8).” The 98.2% penetration rate of television suggests that Americans main form of news consumption is through the television.

In June of 1994 a television phenomenon occurred. A once famous football player, Orenthal James Simpson better known as O.J. Simpson, was watched by millions in a low speed chase with California State Patrol. Simpson’s wife Nicole Brown Simpson’s and alleged boyfriend, Ronald Goldman’s bodies were found mutilated, stabbed and lying in a pool of blood at O.J. Simpson’s estate. It was dour, like a made-for-television movie, set in Hollywood. It had all the ingredients of an American taboo, a wealthy black man, who dated and then married an attractive white woman, who would end up dead at the alleged hands of her famous husband. Hollywood couldn’t have written a better set up.

A year and a half later, on October 3, 1995 “an estimated 150 million people stopped what they were doing to watch the verdict of O.J. Simpson trail” (Frontline, 2005). The verdict of “not guilty,” predictably split America right down racial lines, exposing the fragile truce between blacks and whites.

O.J. Simpson has recently resurfaced with a new book titled, “If I Did It” in which he explores the murders of his wife and her partner from his perspective, as if he were the murderer, hypothetically, of course.

The media has expressed their collective disgust at the “exploitive,” and “distasteful” publishing of the book with hours of coverage and panel discussions about whether FOX should air its two-part interview with Simpson on November 27, and 29, 2006.

The O.J. Simpson trail created a cottage-industry of lawyers-cum pundits like Greta Van Susteren, who on any given day, pollute the airwaves with sensational distractions of missing white women like Lacy Peterson, Elizabeth Smart, and Natalee Holloway and a like, creating
victim celebritism, in which books, pundits and movies-of-the-week are created. This genre of news is fast (driven by news conferences), cheap (uses mostly panel discussions) and out of control (numerous dedicated programming e.g. Nancy Grace).

In June 1994, as the low speed chase occurred down the interstate with hundreds of people cheering O.J. Simpson on, half a world away, thousands of bloated and decomposing bodies were floating down the Kargera River, emitting a stench so foul it could be smelled in the neighboring Uganda. In thirteen weeks after April 6, 1994, an estimated 800,000 people were killed in 100 days during the Rwandan genocide.

The corporate media’s main goal is to penetrate our consciousness and sub consciousness every second of every day with its news, images, and products. In ‘94, the media had made a choice, and that choice was to exploit the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, over exposing genocide in Rwanda. It was the media who first exploited the victims in the over dramatization of the O.J. Simpson trail. It was again the media conglomerates exploiting the victims with the publishing of O.J. Simpson’s forthcoming book, “If I Did It.”

O.J. Simpson was a pawn of the corporate media, used as a deflection and to minimize criticism while they profit from the exploitation of the murdered victims. The public’s misplaced outraged has caused Rupert Murdoch and his publishing company to cancel the book and the two-part interview on FOX but as the Bush Administration and the neocons posture towards war with Iran, the media will shake the shiny keys by again manufacturing misplaced outrage and distraction.




Sources:

Frontline, “The O.J. Verdict” 2005.
Postman, Neil Amusing Ourseleves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York, NY: 1986.
CNN Transcript Anderson Cooper 360, November 16, 2006.
BBC News, “Murdoch Cancels OJ Simpson Plans”
Uelman, F. Gerald,“The Five Lessons of from the OJ Trial” Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara Univeristy, 1996.
More on the Rwanda genocide.

PIMP THIS |